He Wanted Open Marriage, I Chose His Boss

On our eighth wedding anniversary, Logan Reeves was 47 minutes late. He brought no flowers and didn't even look at the new dress I was wearing. He simply set a gray folder on the dining table. The title read: Open Marriage Agreement. His signature was already beneath it. "Claire, we need to talk." I looked at the document, my heart cold. "You want to sleep with someone else?" Logan frowned as if my wording offended him. "Don't make it sound so ugly. We've been married for 8 years. Our relationship is stable, and so is our life together. I just don't think marriage should take away a person's right to be attracted to someone else." He had his eye on the new marketing assistant. She was 24, young and pretty. When he was with her, he felt young again. They had already kissed at a company celebration the previous Friday. That night, I had waited for him until 2:00 a.m. and reheated his soup three times. When he finally came home, he told me a client meeting had run late. 'So he wasn't tied up with work at all. He was out with another woman.' A sharp ache went through my chest. The bottle of red wine beside me was still unopened, the card Logan had written 8 years ago still tied around its neck. Every anniversary, we'll share a better bottle. "If you want to sleep around, why don't you just divorce me?" "Honey, I don't want a divorce." Logan immediately leaned forward. "Claire, you're smart and dependable, and you never embarrass me in public. You're exactly the kind of woman a man wants as a wife. I love the home we've built together." He said it so calmly that he didn't even seem to understand how cruel it was. 'To him, I'm dependable, perfect wife material. The young assistant is the one he wants as a lover, the one who makes him feel passion again. He wants both lives at once.' The agreement was four pages long, and Logan had written every rule himself. Neither party may bring a date home. Neither party may disrupt existing plans as a couple. Neither party may interfere with the other's choices. Neither party may unilaterally end the agreement out of jealousy. It had been printed 3 days earlier. For those 3 days, he had eaten the breakfast I made, worn the shirts I ironed, and asked what time I wanted to book our anniversary dinner. He had carried on as if nothing had happened, with everything already arranged except my signature. I turned to the section on our domestic life. The house, the joint account, and Sunday dinners with his mother were all supposed to continue exactly as before. 'So I'm still supposed to help him prepare for client dinners, remember his parents' birthdays, handle the insurance and bills, and keep playing the capable wife after he comes home from his dates.' "You take fidelity out of the marriage, but you still expect me to do all the work of being your wife?" I pushed the agreement back toward him. "This isn't an open marriage. It's an excuse for you to cheat." Logan's expression darkened. "If I really wanted to cheat, I wouldn't need to sit here and ask for your consent. The fact that I'm telling you at all shows I respect you." Then he glanced down at his watch. "My assistant is still waiting for me." I picked up the black fountain pen beside the folder. Logan had given it to me on our first wedding anniversary, and my name was engraved on the barrel. At the time, he had said he hoped I would use it to sign every document I could be proud of. Now he had placed that same pen beside the agreement and was waiting for me to use it to give him permission to pursue someone else. "Once I sign, I can see someone else too?" Logan finally smiled. "As long as you can find it." That sentence made me angrier than the agreement itself. 'He offers me the same freedom so generously because he's certain I'll never use it. In his eyes, I've long since stopped being attractive to anyone else. I'm just an ordinary housewife.' I turned to the last page and added an exit clause: If either party meets someone better during the open marriage, either party may end the marriage at any time. Logan barely glanced at it before adding his initials beside the change. "Fine. It's not like we're ever getting divorced." Then I signed my name too: Claire Whitaker. For the first time, my own name looked strange on the page. Logan took his copy, stood, and straightened his tie. "Don't wait up. I might not come home tonight." "I won't." He stopped at the door and looked back at me, confused. I picked up the plate of stone-cold steak and dumped it into the trash. "Starting tonight, I'm done waiting for you." After the door closed, I put the unopened anniversary wine in the small fridge in the guest room. Then I reopened three work invitations I had previously declined. The one at the top was from Walker Hotel. The sender was Logan's boss, Adrian Walker.